The names of change.

I want to introduce you to a girl I’ve known for nearly a decade, but who I’ve only just fully met.

She’s a SOLA student, an Afghan girl, and it was one of her classmates who introduced us. It happened very recently, just in the past few weeks, as 2024 was coming to its end and this girl’s classmate and I were having a conversation.

“I was talking with Rawa from school the other day,” this classmate said.

“Who’s Rawa?” I asked.

Rawa, I learned, is a girl who came to SOLA when this classmate did, back in 2016 in Kabul, as members of our inaugural class of 6th grade boarding school students.

Rawa is a nickname. It’s a name that this girl’s mother, who herself was a teacher in Afghanistan, gave her back when she was little. A nickname, not her proper name, and so not a name that ever appeared on an admissions application or in the classroom or on a report card. It’s a name her family uses for her, and it’s a name some of her classmates use for her too.

It's a name, and it’s more than a name.

Rawa is a Dari word that isn’t precisely translatable in English, but broadly means “lawful” or “correct” or “right.” It’s also, for many Afghan women, a very familiar acronym. RAWA stands for the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan. An organization founded in 1977, an organization that for nearly 50 years has been fighting for the rights of Afghan women in the face of the most dire opposition.

A girl named Rawa is a girl who carries the name of change. This is how subtle it can be, how quiet and profound it can be. From generation to generation. From mother to daughter. From woman to woman.

We are part of something larger than us.

This girl, her classmates. Their mothers, their grandmothers. Their childhoods, their days at SOLA, their lives as educated young women in universities and then into the professional world.

Everyone before them and everyone after them. We are part of something larger than us.

To look back at this year at SOLA is to look back on so many successes. Our record-shattering admissions season, in which we received nearly 3,300 applications from girls in 11 nations. Our profound triumph with the launch of our SOLAx online education initiative which in its first nine months of operation has enrolled nearly 16,000 participants in 80 countries and from every single province in Afghanistan, participants who have completed 152,000+ lessons—that’s more than 75,000 hours of learning. Our vigorous response to the now officially-ended outbreak of Marburg virus in Rwanda, a response that kept our entire campus community healthy and safe and free to continue learning.

To look back on this year in Afghanistan is to look back on so much horror. Girls have not attended school past 6th grade since 2021. Women have not attended college since 2022. In 2024, women were told that their voices should no longer be heard outside of their homes. In 2024, women were told that despite living in a nation with one of the world’s highest maternal mortality rates, they would no longer be permitted to train as nurses or midwives who could assist other women, expectant mothers, as they risk their lives to bring forth new life.

2024, looked back upon in these ways, reveals itself as a year of two paths moving in opposite directions. One is directed toward an expansion of opportunities. The other is directed toward the extinguishing of opportunities. And at the crossroads are women and girls. Unconquerable, in the face of it all.

In Pashto, in Dari, in English, across languages and across societies and across borders, I hear the voices of Afghan women and girls. I hear the voices of SOLA. I am a student. I am a learner. I am a sister. I am a daughter. I am tomorrow. I matter. I belong.

Generations of bravery, inherited and passed on. We walk our path and it is a joy to know that you, the person reading these words, walk here too. Side by side. We are part of something larger than us.

This summer, the girl with the name of change stood with her classmates at SOLA to celebrate a long-awaited day. Two years ago this month, I told you about our inaugural class of 6th graders: girls who came to SOLA in 2016, girls who were supposed to graduate as 12th graders in 2022. A graduation that was postponed by Afghanistan’s fall in 2021 and our evacuation to Rwanda, and these girls’ departure from us to study at other boarding schools overseas.

This summer, they came home to our campus. They came home to be honored as 12th grade graduates, off to college in the fall.

Rawa was there. Our entire school community was there.

And as I stood among them, smiling and laughing and applauding, I reflected on the names of change.

Sola is a Pashto word that means “peace.”

Quiet and profound and world-changing, we walk our path into 2025 with you beside us.

I’m so happy that you’re here.